When something unexpected truly works, a certain kind of silence descends upon the therapy room. The quieter kind, which indicates that someone has just realized something true about themselves, is different from the silence of awkwardness or avoidance. A laminated trading card depicting a French philosopher with round glasses and a shaved head has recently been reported by some therapists as the reason for the silence. The card of Foucault. It seems to do the majority of the work.
The actual theory trading cards were not created with therapy in mind. They were developed in 2001 as a tool for students studying cultural theory by David Gauntlett, a professor of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster. They are a lighthearted and humorous way to make complex thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Bell Hooks, and Edward Said seem more approachable. In essence, they resembled Pokémon cards. Instead of attack points, use philosopher stats. They were so hilarious that they were featured in a 2004 New York Times article, and soon after, fan-made knockoffs began to circulate.
Printing the cards was always free. It turned out that accessibility was more important than anyone had thought.
There isn’t a formal movement with a name or a clinical protocol that is currently taking place in some therapy and counseling settings. It is more akin to a low-key experiment conducted by professionals who have discovered something beneficial. A card featuring Foucault’s face and a synopsis of his theories regarding power, particularly his contention that power is a fluid concept present in all social interactions rather than a fixed entity held by a single group, proves to be an incredibly powerful prompt. The wording on the card appears to be surprisingly helpful to clients who find it difficult to explain why a workplace feels oppressive or why certain relationships make them feel watched. Not because they’ve read Foucault. since they have experienced him.
This may indicate something about the flow of ideas. For decades, Foucault wrote about disciplinary systems, how institutions shape people’s self-perceptions, and how power persuades people to control their own behavior. Once limited to graduate seminars, this body of work has been subtly making its way into the public consciousness over the past ten years through activist frameworks, social media, and cultural criticism. Discipline and Punish’s fundamental lessons have been secondhand to those who have never opened it. All the card does is give that hidden knowledge a name and make it visible.
This seems to be related to something older as well. Tarot cards, which have been used for decades in a variety of therapy-related contexts, are effective in part because visual cues avoid defensive thinking. They encourage projection. Instead of a direct question from a clinician, a card featuring the Tower or the Empress provides a client with an external response. According to the theory, trading cards work similarly. The distinction is that they convey real arguments—compressed but coherent—instead of archetypes.
According to reports, a different kind of conversation is sparked by the Bell Hooks card, which is based on her work about love, belonging, and the relationship between identity and social structure. more intimate. less diagnostic. However, the Foucault card tends to unlock something specific: the gradual realization that many of the pressures a person experiences are structural products rather than personal failures. Therapists suggest that this realization may be subtly radical.
Whether this will become a standard procedure is still up in the air. Manuals are not yet being written by anyone. However, there’s something almost fitting about it—a set of cards that were originally intended to commercialize critical theory, as the original website jokingly acknowledged, being repurposed to encourage more free thought. Guy Debord would have likely had thoughts on the matter.
